Tag: Jim Acosta

The media obsess over the weirdest things these days. They can write and talk for days over whether President Donald Trump has one scoop of ice cream or two, how many Diet Cokes he drinks a day, whether a psychologist who hasn’t examined the President personally is credible enough to speak on his mental fitness, and other minutia with literally nothing to do with actual news.

Maybe the news business has changed since I decided journalism and I should spend a few decades away from each other to get our heads straight. And I can assure you one of us has (and for once it’s me).

Whether you think today’s news is hard-hitting and factual or a DNC public relations release, we should spend a little time delving into what news has become.

newsWhat Leftists believe it means – information that needs to get into the public’s hands no matter what

What it really means – political narratives with bylines

When we think back to how newscasters and reporters used to report the day’s events, it wasn’t remarkable. The stories they covered may have been, but they tended not to wear their ideologies on their sleeves. You got the facts and were left to make up your mind on how to think about them.

Today? Not so much. In fact, according to MSNBC’s Mika “I’m a Barbie Girl in a Newsie World” Brzezinski, the media’s job is to “control what people think.” And she’s not alone. During the Obama Administration, news figures said it was their jobs to help the President. Now that Trump’s in office, those same news figures are upset at how “soft” their coverage has become.

From watchdogs to lapdogs, kids.

The truth of the matter is news isn’t about helping or hurting a President or control what people think. News should only be about, well, news. There is a vast difference between a news show and an opinion show, just like there is a difference between a news article and an opinion piece. The difference is how facts are presented.

Let’s say you see a car accident outside your living room window. As a witness, the police may ask you to provide your account of what happened. They don’t care about your opinions on seatbelt laws or cracking down on distracted driving; they want details so they can investigate the matter further. In the days of Edward R. Murrow, reporters treated news like that. No fluff, no personal insights, just information.

So, how did we get from there to here? A change in culture and politics. During the 60s and 70s, the youth became more socially conscious (which isn’t a bad thing, necessarily) and believed they could change the world (also, not a bad thing in and of itself). Then, they discovered Leftist ideas (which is a bad thing), and the rest is history. By embracing ideas that work great on paper, but suck when implemented, the youth of the 60s and 70s became the adults of the 80s, 90s, and today, and they put their feelings ahead of facts. And that mindset infiltrated the media, which lead to seeing newspeople asking Hillary Clinton what kind of dessert she likes to have while delving into the “dark history” of Sarah Palin’s son’s girlfriend’s mother’s dog groomer’s cousin’s accountant’s pet sitter’s favorite teacher because if Palin associated with that kind of person, she’s utterly unfit to be a political leader!

And when they’re not trying to tear down any Right-leaning person for an overdue library book, these same serious news reporters fawn all over celebrities. What kind of pizza does Taylor Swift order? Find out in this multi-page article in the New York Times! Want to know the secret behind all things Kardashian? Watch this 6 minute news video! Do you absolutely need to know what is going through Nikki Minaj’s mind right now?

It’s air. I saved you from having to find out on your national newscasts. You’re welcome.

News organizations tell us the crap they’re serving us as news is what we ask for, and it’s not their fault we demand dreck. Although there are some people who do (I’m looking right at you, Jerry Springer fans), some of us want more. Let’s have a news report on global climate change where both sides are presented in a fair and balanced light and let us decide for ourselves what needs to be done. Ditto with racism, gay rights, Islam, and other controversial topics.

But the news people can’t do that. They feel anything that is outside of their ideological bubble isn’t worth discussing. There’s a reason these people call the land between the East and West Coasts “flyover country” and it’s not because they’re high when they travel through this part of the country. (Although, given what they choose to report, drug use isn’t completely off the table.) It’s because these serious news reporters don’t think anything happens here. In fact, if they had their druthers, they wouldn’t venture outside of Manhattan or Los Angeles to track down a story.

Which is part of the problem. The minute you start purposely excluding yourself from potential stories, the minute you cease being a good reporter and become a stenographer for whatever ideology you deny you have in public. But, then don’t call yourselves news people.

My rule of thumb when it comes to news is Ronald Reagan’s “Trust, but verify.” Seek out multiple sources of information, paying close attention to what is being said and how it’s being said. There are subtle clues in turns of a phrase that will reveal the leanings of a writer or reporter, but you have to be looking for them. And, yes, my Leftist friends, that includes Fox News, Breitbart, and other right-leaning sources.

In the meantime, maybe the news folks will get the hint if we start ignoring them. Or, if you can’t do that, do what I do and point and laugh at them. I hear Jim Acosta is particularly salty about being mocked.

To say President Donald Trump’s relationship with the press is hostile is like saying the Hatfields and McCoys had a minor tiff. A particular thorn in Trump’s side is CNN’s Jim Acosta, who is one part Eddie Haskel and one part Sam Donaldson (or at least the way people saw Donaldson during the Reagan Administration).

This hostility came to a head recently during a press conference where White House senior policy advisor Stephen Miller and Acosta over a proposed cut to our immigration policy introduced by Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue. During this exchange, Miller referred to Acosta’s “cosmopolitan bias”, which has made the Left go completely over-the-top cray-cray. (In other words, they way they act on any day ending in a Y.)

Strap in, folks. We’re in for a weird one.

cosmopolitanWhat the Left thinks it means – sophisticated and intelligent, people targeted by white supremacists for being sophisticated and intelligent

What it really means – a bunch of people who think their farts don’t stink

If there is one thing the Left excels at, it’s being egotistical. (That, and not being on speaking terms with reality.) They also are great at pretending to be victims, as we can see from Acosta’s actions and statements. To them, being cosmopolitan is not an insult because it speaks well of them. And everyone in their social circles is just like them, thinks like them, speaks like them, and is generally a carbon copy of them.

In other words, they wouldn’t know what to do if they actually had to interact with someone who isn’t one of them. It’s like they’re all Eva Gabor’s character from “Green Acres.”

It’s this kind of thinking Miller was criticizing and Acosta was reflecting. It’s also this kind of thinking that prevents reporters from being as informed and effective as they need to be in today’s media landscape. People rely on reporters to keep them informed on the news of the day, but when the reporters are dumber than a bag of hammers, that trust is violated. Of course, the public trusts the media less than the Weekly World News these days, so maybe they’re coming to realize reporters aren’t that smart.

Exhibit A: Jim Acosta

Acosta’s attempt to take a portion of the inscription on the Statue of Liberty and turn it into immigration law shows he’s ignorant of both. But to hear him describe it (and, believe me, you can’t get him to shut up about it on Twitter), he was defending the rights of those trying to come into this country. Of course, Acosta doesn’t want us to think about the distinction between those trying to come to America through legal channels and those wanting to sneak in because that would ruin the narrative. And in Acosta’s world, if you try to make that distinction as the Trump Administration is trying to do, that’s racist.

I told you he wasn’t that smart.

Adding to this stupidity is the Left’s attempt to paint “cosmopolitan” as secret code for white supremacists because they say Hitler expressed some of the same sentiments about the sophisticated and intelligent. Yeah, and Hitler wore pants. Using that logic, any Leftist who wears pants is literally Hitler. Using real logic, there is a big difference between echoing sentiments and being 100% behind a person’s agenda. And considering Hitler actually leaned more left than right, the Left might want to think carefully about using such flimsy logic to compare people to Hitler.

Now, for the funny part. (And I’m sure some of you readers are saying “Finally!”) Acosta’s outburst was over…a bill. Not a law. Not a platform plank. Not even a sternly-worded memo. A bill. As fans of “Schoolhouse Rock” can attest, that means it’s not a law yet, and…it can be changed.

You know, for people who claim to be cosmopolitan, Acosta and his fellow Leftists are quite unsophisticated when it comes to vital concepts.

To take Miller’s point a bit further, the Left is insulated from the rest of the world, and that’s by choice. Yet, they seem to think they’re so much smarter than the rest of us because…reasons. That’s a bad situation. Picture if you will a scientist whose expertise is in one area of science and decides to comment on a completely different area of science because he or she is considered to be an expert on science by people who don’t understand it. Wait, we already have Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Let’s try another analogy. Let’s say you have a plumber and you need your roof fixed. Unless your plumber also does roofing, you wouldn’t go to him or her for advice. But we’re being told people who rarely leave their urban settings have their fingers on the pulse of the nation outside of their urban settings. Nothing could be further from the truth. That’s the problem with living in an ideological echo chamber: you don’t hear anything outside of it.

The biggest problem with the Left’s reaction to Miller’s comment is it let their mask slide a bit more to show just how much they disdain people outside of their cliques. The media by and large don’t know what life is like between the East and West Coasts, and few are willing to put in the effort to find out. Whether it’s reporters from the Huffington Post or Dan “Fake But Accurate” Rather, Leftists keep being mystified there are people who live between the East and West Coasts and may have a different perspective than they do.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was Miller’s point.

And Acosta and the Left completely missed it.

By calling out Acosta’s cosmopolitan bias, Miller wasn’t trying to blow a Nazi/white supremacist dog whistle. He was making a point about how out of touch the Left is, and given how many column inches have gone into finding more conspiracy theories than Art Bell and Jesse Ventura hooking up with the guys from “Ancient Aliens”, it’s clear they haven’t figured it out. But you do you, kids! You may not think much of me, but that’s fine. At least I can tell the difference between a poem and immigration law.